how do middle-man agencies work??
How do these middle-man agencies keep getting translators accepting low rates. I understand some languages in areas with low costs of living, but other languages with translators less likely? For example, I work with Swedish and Finnish, and I constantly get agenies wanting like 0.03/0.04 per word for these languages....like, where are these Swedish and Finnish translators living that they can work for such low rates? I live in Finland and no way could I make a living with such low rates...are these translators just using MT, scammers, etc? I constantly get turned down for rates less than 0.08 - 0.10/wd and there are these people who do it for less? No wonder we are doomed as an industry.
How do these middle-man agencies, and by that I mean agencies that go between bigger agencies and translators, get such low rate translators?? This is insane.